


loyal to you

by ache_fey



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: :), Angst, Canon Compliant, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Time Skip, i'm bad at romance and good at angst so it's just a lot of feelings that dedue doesn't understand, it's not really romantic whoops, no beta we die like men!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 11:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20656865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ache_fey/pseuds/ache_fey
Summary: nightly since his return, dedue silently guarded dimitri through his hours-long council with the dead. and every morning, the prince left the chapel at sunrise without sparing even a glance in his vassal's direction, without uttering a single word.tonight, though, was different.





	loyal to you

He would be there, as he always was, head down in silent prayer before what had once been the altar to the Goddess. Now that it was instead a crumbling pile of debris, Dimitri, in his solitary prostration, had assigned it new purpose—a shrine for a new religion, one that only he worshipped.

He had missed dinner once again to conspire with the voices of the dead. And so Dedue had gone to the dining hall alone, had sat with his former classmates, had dragged a spoon languidly through a frothy bowl of chowder. Long ago, he had insisted on constant vigilance over the man he was sworn to protect, at all times but their sleeping hours. But now, he could leave Dimitri alone in the chapel for hours on end—while he ate, while he bathed, even while he trained—and be certain he would still be there upon Dedue’s eventual return. After all, if anyone malicious tried to approach the prince during these holy hours, he would be struck down without mercy, without thought, his body left to rot on the temple’s floor. Dedue sometimes wondered if the man, who was once fast and strong but full of petty faults during battle, had over time grown stronger than his protector. He sometimes wondered why the thought of it made his chest ache.

Now, as Dedue made his way through the courtyard and north toward the chapel, most of their comrades had retired to their chambers—some in pairs, hoping no one would notice, shame coloring their necks magenta. But Dedue did not understand this shame; they were at war, and when resources and morale both began to dwindle, warmth and pleasure were the only comforts that remained. He would have had it himself, would have at least offered, but he knew how the others saw him: not quite inhuman, but, in his single-minded devotion to Dimitri, somehow above certain proclivities. 

And perhaps they were right, he thought, pausing on the walkway to the chapel, allowing the dark stillness to wrap itself around his waist. The intrinsic needs of the human form—sex, food, a safe place to retire—were tertiary to certain emotional and spiritual desires he harbored. He desired, above all else, to be needed. He desired to have strength, and to use that strength for good. He desired a sound mind, and an understanding of his own self. Those were his principal necessities. With them fulfilled, he could survive celibacy, hunger, homelessness.

Perhaps that was why he was still here, still keeping a nightly vigil over His Highness even as their old classmates, the professor, even the townspeople and merchants whispered dastardly things about him. That he had lost his humanity. That his heart had been ripped from his breast five years ago and now his chest lay still and silent, unmoved even by breath. That he was hollow, empty, only half-alive. More demon than man.

Perhaps it was for selfish reasons that he resisted these unkind rumors, for if Dimitri truly was an unfeeling monster, a wolf who had lost all need for his pack, Dedue would be purposeless. And if he served no purpose, what right did he have to live and fight and dine amongst the kingdom’s finest soldiers, its most righteous and selfless and brave?

But—no. No, he thought, turning back towards the chapel to continue his nightly pilgrimage. He denied the rumor that Dimitri had become a beast because it was  _ false.  _ He  _ knew _ it to be false. Dimitri was not cruel or villainous or bloodthirsty. He was scared. He was lonely. He was someone who felt more deeply than most, and over the years, those feelings had grown like a swath of ivy, overtaking his more reasonable sensibilities. He would do anything to feel  _ less,  _ less of the dead’s torment, less of the weight of the Kingdom on his shoulders, less shame, less anger, less grief. He would do anything, even if it meant spilling more blood.

Dedue pulled his cloak, a black velvet piece he had acquired while traveling with an Imperial textile merchant some years back, tightly around his broad shoulders. He was glad he had brought it along; he hadn’t realized how cold it would get once the sun set. 

Dimitri did not turn at the sound of the chapel’s heavy doors sliding open. But when his vassal slowed to a stop behind him, the prince spoke in this new voice of his, low and ragged. “Dedue.”

“Yes,” Dedue replied simply. 

“I know the sound of your footfalls well,” Dimitri said, answering a question that had been purposefully left unasked.

“Even after all this time, Your Highness?”

A long moment passed as the prince shifted his weight, still facing away from Dedue. “It has been less time than you know,” Dimitri said. “For many months after you died, I heard you in the night. Every night. Your footsteps, approaching me as I lay half-asleep in my cot. And then, when you reached my bedside, I... you would...”

With a half-hidden cough, Dimitri fell silent, and Dedue said nothing. He waited patiently for the prince to be ready to speak, for he had learned quickly that this purportedly beastly Dimitri disliked being prompted: to eat, to dress, to bathe, to speak. And yet, as he waited, a wave of unease coursed through his body. He knew how Dimitri’s phantoms tormented him, their anger manifesting in dark scratches along his arms and abdomen, in self-starvation and sleepless nights (this had been true, albeit to a lesser extent, even in their academy days). That his own visage may have been one of his charge’s torturers—the thought of it brought bile to his throat.

(If His Highness heard him cough, he did not acknowledge it.)

And so he could not resist but to eventually ask: “What would I do, Your Highness?” 

Dedue peered through the dim evening light to watch as Dimitri pulled his arms in towards his chest, a child trying fruitlessly to guard himself against a nightmare, to hide flesh behind flesh. The room—and, therefore, the man’s slender form—was illuminated only by the moon and a circle of small candles around Dimitri’s feet. Dedue wondered, absently, if the prince had lit them himself at nightfall while the rest of the monastery dined and socialized without him. In his mind’s eye, Dimitri looked so small knelt on the chapel’s floor, a matchstick in one hand while the other pressed into the tile, making tribute to his false gods. 

A silhouette of a hand waved through the air, drawing Dedue’s attention back. “You would simply vanish.”

Dedue’s shoulders slackened at that; he hadn’t realized how closely he was holding them to his ears. But seconds later, Dimitri laughed that new, bitter laugh of his, and the bitter bile returned to Dedue’s tongue. 

“To think that you had come to save me, to heal me, to comfort me,” Dimitri said, voice growing even lower, even softer, a growl emanating from the hollow of his chest, “and then for you to vanish, just at the edge of my cot, a mere arm’s length away, night after night after night after night...” Here, he loosed another piercing laugh, where another sort of man may have choked out a sob. “It broke me more than anything else.”

He glanced over his shoulder at Dedue, who could make out a dark sort of smile, a sinister smirk on the prince’s face. It was an expression that belonged only in some small part to the beast. The old Dimitri had smiled like that many times: when he won a spar with particular ease, or when he received the highest marks on an important exam. But it was the context—the chapel, the candles, the cruel confession—that rebirthed it into something gruesome and necromantic. “Admit it,” he said, staring somewhere far beyond his vassal’s face. “You find me pathetic for that.”

“For wanting my comfort?”

“For letting that want drive me to insanity.”

Dedue’s frown only deepened, his upper lip curling a bit. This was the worst part—that even Dimitri thought himself insane. If it were just the other Blue Lions, spreading lies amongst themselves, then he could have ignored them, could have even chastised those who dared speak against their future king. But then Dimitri said such things…

Dedue shook his head and swallowed a lump of unwelcome emotion that had lodged itself in his throat. “It is not pathetic, Your Highness,” he said. “It is is a natural response to your… situation.” 

The prince said nothing in response, only blowing a sharp breath out his nose and turning back towards the rubble. With a sigh, Dedue crossed his arms tightly, cursing himself for saying the wrong thing and ending their conversation abruptly. But it had happened just like this every night for the past few weeks—Dimitri would speak to him for only a few moments before returning his attention fully to his spectral council. When he did, Dedue would silently slip into a pew and wait. He knew that Dimitri didn’t really need his protection, having survived on his own for five painful years, but hoped that his presence in the room at least had a pacifying effect—that, knowing someone else was listening, the spirits would be less demanding. 

After the prince had been still for several moments and Dedue was certain he would now be entirely consumed by his prayers until morning light, he moved to ease himself into a pew. As he did, he spoke the words he could not have said, had Dimitri been listening: “I wanted to be there. I wish I had been. I will regret that I was not for the rest of my life.”

Though he had spoken quietly, the words barely passing his lips, as if he were afraid to discolor the air of this holy place, Dimitri somehow heard. Immediately, the prince turned on his heel, approaching his vassal with short, quick steps—a swordsman’s steps, an assassin’s steps—and then was at his side, hovering above him. For a moment, he merely stared at him, their eyes locked with an intensity Dedue had never seen outside of battle. The man did look angry, but it was not the sort of anger that usually colored his face—not bloodthirsty, not vengeful, not cruel. His eye had suddenly become wet, his gaze unfocused. His chest heaved with a sharp breath, inhaled through his teeth.

It was the anger, Dedue realized, that comes when a comrade is struck down in battle. That guilty, mournful sort of anger that is directed not at the enemy, but at the friend himself.

“Stand,” he ordered, stepping back, and the command was given with such authority Dedue almost did not notice the way his voice shook.

So Dedue stood, and turned to face his liege. And something in his heart twisted, for there was something pleasantly familiar about taking orders, something relieving about being suddenly needed when he had expected to spend all evening in silent stillness. But there, too, was uncertainty. Dimitri was a good man—Dedue spent many long hours every night convincing himself as much—but he had become so unpredictable, so virulent. He wondered for just a moment if this man, whom he had known since he was a peach-cheeked, soprano-voiced adolescent, would ever want to hurt him. To kill him. To plunge a heavy blade through his chest, stopping his breath, slowing his heart… 

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he forced it away, willing it to melt it into the blackness that filled the chapel. Either the thought was impudent or correct, and he did not know which was worse.

Dimitri did not hurt him. Instead, he stared at him for a few more long moments before peeling off the leather glove that covered his calloused right hand. With his hand now bare, he reached up to grip the taller man’s face, the unshaven chin fitting into the space between his index finger and his thumb. Then, suddenly, he jerked Dedue’s head from right to left, pausing on either side to lean forward and scrutinize the taller man’s face (which, despite his best efforts, had twisted into a grimace in Dimitri’s bruising grasp). When he was satisfied with whatever he had found, he lowered his arm slightly, momentarily pressing his knuckles lightly against the taller man’s throat, before flattening his palm and stilling it on the right side of Dedue’s chest. His fingers slid underneath the velvet cloak so that Dedue could feel the precise shape of his charge’s fingertips through his shirt.

And there they stayed for a long while—Dedue trying to calm his breathing, trying to keep his heart from pounding so forcefully that Dimitri would feel it reverberate in his own chest. After all, he had thought for the briefest moment that the prince was going to choke him. And now—well, now they were silent, and touching, and standing so close he could feel the prince’s shallow breaths cooling at the base of his neck. They hadn’t touched once since their reunion. Dedue was unsure whether the prince had had any physical contact in five years, other than in battle: a forearm pressing into an enemy’s windpipe.

And now… 

Dimitri stood frozen, joints pliant, his gazed pointed towards his vassal’s face but only half-focused, as if he were trying to see through his skin. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he dropped his hand unceremoniously, to swing limply at his side. 

“So, you are corporeal after all,” the prince said, taking a step back to look at his retainer, clarity sparkling in his uncovered eye. It was as if, for the past three weeks, Dedue had appeared only half-there, half-visible, shrouded by some ghostly veil, and only now was Dimitri able to look upon him fully, with no obstructions. “I assumed as much, as the others seemed to be able to see you, too. But I have been fooled before.”

Then, his eyes widened and his lips twitched, as if he were being hit with a brilliant realization, as if the Goddess herself had just descended from the skies and nominated him a prophet. He laughed, taking a stumbling step back towards the fallen altar, and Dedue had to resist the instinct to catch him, for he was a predatory animal (that’s what the others told him, anyway), and he would clamp his powerful jowls down upon anything that came at him too suddenly. 

“You are alive, corporeal, and here, before me,” Dimitri said. “And yet I am not  _ saved.  _ I am not  _ healed.” _

“But, Your Highness. Are you comforted?”

Now it was Dimitri whose face twisted in surprise and confusion, that masochistic grin (for he seemed to be amused by his own suffering) falling quickly to reveal what Dedue had already known lay underneath: sweet, young Dimitri, scared and tired and achingly  _ familiar _ . Yes, the beast was one manifestation of the man’s grief, but here was the other, hidden, Dedue theorized, because the only thing that could be more painful than being insane was knowing full well who he was, and where he was, and still being able to do absolutely nothing about it.

But was he comforted, was he comforted, this half-forgotten child, this living ghost? Dedue could surmise little from the sad, vacant expression that now occupied Dimitri’s features. Either he was not, and was devastated to realize that perhaps he would never know solace again; or he was, and was embarrassed to feel such sudden warmth; or he wasn’t, and was stunned at his own depraved lack of emotion; or he was, and was broken-hearted to think of all the wasted years between them.

Of course, instead of answering Dedue’s question, he posed his own, though it was asked softly, his uncovered eye shifting along the patterns in the tiled floor. “What are you doing here?” The implicit order: leave me be. Leave me to mourn and to plan and to suffer and to be cruel and ravenous and wild.

(Dedue didn’t know what to make of the fact that the prince wouldn’t say it outright.)

“I’m standing guard, Your Highness, while you hold your... parley with the dead,” Dedue answered. “I have been here every night for two and a half weeks. Why did you not ask me this until now?”

“I do not need your  _ protection, _ ” the prince roared, acerbic, marching up to the taller man once again. It seemed that answer—or perhaps, the question that followed it—was all Dimitri needed to force himself back behind the mask he had inadvertently removed moments before.

“Your Highness,” he said, punctuating the title with a sharp breath, but refusing to move an inch from His Highness’s reddening face. “If something happened to you that I could have prevented, I would not be able to go on living.”

“Then you are a fool,” Dimitri spat in reply, grabbing the collar of Dedue’s cloak, wrapping the fabric around his fist, and jerking his vassal’s head down so that he was stooped over, nose to nose with the prince. Now, Dimitri’s voice dropped to a whisper against the taller man’s lips, and Dedue could swear he was close enough to taste the Imperial army’s blood in his words. “I am ready and willing and  _ eager  _ to die for this cause. And when the time comes, Dedue, you must let me.” Dimitri bared his teeth as a rabid wolf would. And yet, his yellowed smile was somehow more reminiscent of a wounded deer than of the beast gnawing on its bones. “That,” he breathed, “is an order.”

“It is not one I will follow,” Dedue replied immediately, in a steady tone and at a conversational volume. He was unwilling to play this game of contrived intimidation. He was unwilling to let Dimitri think he could ever, ever be frightened of him. 

Dimitri tightened his hand in Dedue’s shirt, his knuckles pressing into the scarred skin at the man’s throat. “I thought you were loyal to me,” Dimitri said, trying so desperately to be vicious, and yet something flashed in his eyes—it was that wounded expression again, tired and heartbroken and heartbreakingly  _ young.  _

And so Dedue reached forward, placing a wide hand over Dimitri’s clenched fist, gently easing it open and bringing it to rest at the younger man’s side. Then he straightened his back, took a small step backward—as far as he could move before his calves were pressed into the side of the pew—and placed a gentle hand upon the prince’s chest, keeping them an arm’s length apart from one another. Dimitri’s heart beat unevenly and forcefully under the heel of Dedue’s palm, like a captive sparrow trying to beat itself out of its cage. Then, Dedue’s face softened almost into a smile, and he despised how much it felt like he was trying to tame a lion, and he said, “I  _ am  _ loyal to you, Dimitri. I am more loyal to you than you are to yourself.”

For a moment, Dedue was certain that the younger man was going to shake violently free of his touch, to stalk back to his makeshift shrine, to call him an idealistic fool and loudly bade him vassal away. Or, worse: that he would pull his sword from its sheath and take up a fighting stance, his lone eye void of any emotion at all. 

Instead, Dimitri stood still but for the way his shoulders sank, the way his heels shuffled. After another moment passed (his heartbeat growing no less erratic), he placed a gentle hand upon Dedue’s wrist, peeling the hand off of his chest. And then they were as they had been so many times so many years ago—face-to-face, untouching, Dedue waiting silently for his orders. Prince and servant, as they were always meant to be, and would have always been, if they had been born into a peaceful era in a fair and uncomplicated world. 

But no orders came, only a question delivered like a prayer. “Why are you good to me, Dedue? Even when your ghost appeared to me, he was kind. This was long after the footsteps at my bedside, years after. The others were impatient for revenge and ached for Imperial blood. They whispered in my ear constantly, imploring me to kill, and kill, and kill. But not you. You simply walked alongside me, keeping me company. Warming me, when I needed it, with…” He paused for a moment, lips limply parted, searching for the right phrasing. “...with familiar words. Things you used to say to me back then. Kind things… not unlike what you just said.” Even in the candlelight, Dedue could still see magenta spreading up from the prince’s shoulders. “I know now, of course, that you were not really haunting me—you were just an apparition, devised in my grieving mind. Perhaps it was then that I should’ve known you were alive, as you were unlike any other ghost I have known.”

And Dedue wanted desperately to place his hands upon the prince’s strong shoulders, to shout and tell him that they were  _ all _ his own creations, that their cruelty and impatience were his own, that the dead lay still and silent in their graves. And he wanted to explain that he knew this to be true, he  _ knew,  _ because if the dead truly could visit us, he would have a whole nation’s worth of spirits to contend with. 

Yet, he was buffeted by another question: if all of Dimitri’s phantoms were fabrications, why was his fabrication of Dedue so… distinct?

Terrified of disrupting the temporary peace they had created, Dedue answered softly, “I am indebted to you, Your Highness. I’ve sworn myself to your protection—”

“No,” Dimitri interrupted loudly, his fists clenched at his side. “Be honest, the way you are forcing me to be honest. Why are you loyal to me?” 

“Because you are an exceptional man,” Dedue answered, fixing sea-green eyes upon Dimitri’s sky blue. Conceding. 

It was easier, these days, to concede. 

“You are honorable. Erudite. Generous. Understanding. There is no one more suited to leadership than a man with your heart. The moment I first saw you, I saw a glimpse of the future—a calm and free Fódlan, helmed by a blonde child in an oversized crown. The funny thing is”—here, he laughed, and realized that tears were beginning to wet his lashes—“I did not even know you were Faerghus’s orphaned prince. I learned that later. And yet, somehow, from that first instance as I took your hand through the flames, I knew.

“You are to be the greatest leader this land has ever known. I truly believe you will change the world for the better. But you will be no good to anyone if you die before you ascend the throne.”

And then he clamped his lips shut and clenched his jaw, trying to will his eyes to dry, trying to convince himself that he had kept his voice steady. He had never cried in front of the prince before, not even on that horrible day. There were some who believed that all of the people of Duscur were serious and stoic, because Dedue was their only reference. But in reality, Duscur’s was a vibrant culture—the people were neighborly and friendly, and celebrated their gods through spirited song and dance that he imagined the followers of Seiros would have found obnoxious. It was Dedue himself who was quiet, who preferred to keep his feelings hidden. He had been that way since he was a child. 

In fact, he still keenly remembered those days after the Tragedy, as he and Dimitri were transported in secret to a location where the Knights of Seiros could better protect the young prince (this secret hideaway was, in fact, not far from Garreg Mach monastery, though Dedue did not know that then). Because they were traveling in a merchant’s cart and camping in remote locations to avoid detection, Dedue and Dimitri were always forced to share space with one another, so for nearly five days and four nights, the pair was constantly in one another’s company. From what Dedue could remember, in that entire time, the little blonde boy who had saved his life never once stopped crying, not when he ate or bathed. He sobbed even in his sleep. Dedue, in contrast, hardly made a sound—he knew some basic terms and phrases in Fódlan’s language, but a voice in the back of his head, a voice with a lilting, fresh quality reminiscent of his sister’s, begged him not to abandon his mother tongue, not yet, not while buildings in Duscur still burned.

(So perhaps he, too, had once conferred with the dead.)

On the fifth night, Dimitri and Dedue were brought to a small military base in located in a secluded mountain range where they were to stay until the Church could confirm that it was safe for Dimitri to return to the capital. There, the pair were given two adjacent rooms in the base’s barracks, separated by thick, oak walls. And the moment Dedue was alone in his chamber, he cried until he could not see or breathe, pounded his fists against the wall until his fingers bruised and his fingernails shattered, cried out every swear that existed in his language, and cursed every god he had ever worshipped until his throat was raw. 

Somehow, he had held back tears for four nights and five days as he silently and privately mourned the death of his family, the loss of his home, the destruction of a good and peaceful nation. And yet now, nine years later, nine years older, stronger, wiser, he could not will his eyes to dry. 

Dimitri stepped cautiously towards his vassal, and Dedue wondered if the prince thought him weak. Just as Dedue could plainly see all the ways Dimitri had changed since their last meeting, could Dimitri sense in him a newfound fragility? Would he laugh, revile him for his affectionate words? Cast him out, demand a new retainer, one who was capable of guarding him without bursting into theatrics? The prince had always spoken of a  _ friendship  _ between them, some sort of relationship that was equal and fair. But was the part of him that wanted that still alive, or had it been sacrificed: sustenance for the beast?

Another step, and Dedue flinched. Perhaps Dimitri would strike him down, right where he stood, so quickly that he would not even be able to reach for his axe. So quickly that he would not even have time to think about how poetic it was to die by his charge’s hand. 

“Dedue…” Dimitri started, but Dedue held up a calloused hand, quieting him.

“Please, do not ask me anything more. I cannot bear it.”

Dimitri shook his head, stepping closer still, a deep, concentrated frown pulling his brows together. Then, he lifted his gloveless right hand, and with bruised and blood-crusted knuckle, he brushed away a tear that had pooled below Dedue’s eye. 

“You and your handkerchief in the merchant’s cart,” he said slowly, each phrase punctuated by a heavy breath, as if the task were sapping all of his concentration. “After the Tragedy of Duscur. Wiped my eyes when I cried. Terribly intimate. And we had only just met. I wanted to return the favor”—he turned his attention to the other side of Dedue’s face, where a steady but silent stream of tears now ran down a flushed cheek—“but, in four years, was never given the opportunity.”

And all Dedue could do was breathe as calmly as he could, even as his body began to stiffen and burn. This. This was another thing he had always made secondary to his duties—affection. He gave it freely without ever expecting it to be reciprocated. When it was, when it came at him with the force and the suddenness of an arrow soaring over a wall to pierce an unsuspecting victim, he did not know how to react. He half-expected his legs to fall out from underneath him. He half-expected Dimitri to suddenly feel ashamed and disgusted by their closeness, and to suddenly pull away.

(How fiercely he dreaded that moment. How deeply that dread disturbed him.)

“Dimitri,” Dedue finally said, after what felt like far too many moments.

“Dedue?”

And he could have said, this is inappropriate. This is wrong. I know that, in the past, you wished for our relationship to be familiar, for me to think of you as a friend and equal. But shouldn’t that desire have been quashed when I laid down my life for you in Fhirdiad? Did that not convince you that all I’ve ever wanted was to serve you, to die for you?

Or he could have asked, what do you hope to accomplish with this? You have spent five years convincing yourself that you are a terrible and bloodthirsty beast, that your kindness and your virtue have been methodically melted away by your step-sister’s crimes and the tragedies of your youth. If you are so eager to appear monstrous, why act so much like the man you once were? Why show that hidden self to anyone? Why show him to  _ me? _

Or he could’ve said, in that merchant’s cart, I only ever wiped your tears when we traveled through the night, and you fell asleep with your face pressed into a potato sack, and you looked so sad and tired and so much younger than me, even though we were nearly the same age. I only wiped your eyes then. How can you remember?

But all he said was: “Don’t you have other matters to attend to?”

And Dimitri stepped back, and blinking as if he had just been shaken out of a hazy dream, and that, too, had a terrible effect on the taller man. “Yes,” he said, slowly, remembering. “My father is waiting. You will stand watch?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” 

“Good. Good.”

Dedue’s eyes were still bloodshot as the prince turned, almost mechanically, back towards the front of the chapel and began murmuring his incoherent prayers, a droning sound that mingled with the chirping crickets, the crooning owls. So quickly he forgot his vassal’s presence, even as Dedue’s tears still shone silver on Dimitri’s skin; so quickly did he trade in the company of the living for the whispers of the dead.

As his classmates laid asleep beside one another, calm and silent and  _ happy _ , if only for a few hours at a time, Dedue sat in a caramel-colored pew and watched the quivering silhouette of this man, this golden-haired prince, this destined sovereign. It was a vigil he had kept every night since he had returned to Dimitri’s side, a daily ritual he would continue until the war’s eventual end. And even after, even after, if the then-king would continue to have him. Let the other men and women have their parties, their balls; let them dance in their expensive eveningwear and dine on their grand feasts. Let them couple off, have children, rule their territories, and grow giddy with power. He would have this: a disquieted charge, a pantheon of false deities, another long, sleepless night. But it was more than enough for him. If Dimitri needed him, he could survive loneliness, poverty, illness, solitude, heartbreak, discomfort.

And Dimitri still needed him, he knew, because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have allowed Dedue to stay here with him, watching over him, would he?

When the sun rose above Fódlan, and bright morning light filtered rose-colored through the holes in the ceiling, Dimitri blinked into them like a newborn animal opening its eyes for the first time. After a moment of stillness, he grunted, turned on his heel and made his way towards the entrance—walking past Dedue without acknowledging the man. He knew Dimitri used these early morning hours to eat a grizzly, foraged morning meal and to stalk the grounds for foes; Dedue usually used the time to get a few restless hours of sleep before the rest of the monastery rose and began the day’s labor. But this time, Dimitri stopped at the chapel’s doors, hand rested on the handle, and called out: “Dedue. Come.”

Dedue rose from his place, the joints at his knees aching dully from the sudden movement. Yes, yes, Dimitri still needed him. He hadn’t been sure, and the uncertainty had worn at him, but now, as they stepped out into the golden sunrise, eyes adjusting painfully to the sudden brightness, he knew. 

He had seen this sight many times in the weeks since his arrival: the sun rising up above the former school grounds, making even the ruined buildings shine. But now, Dimitri was a part of the image, standing in the foreground, back to Dedue, highlighted pink and yellow by the color-changing sky. Leading him who knows where, for the first time in who knows how long. 

Dedue’s heart swelled at it, and for the first time in five years, he could picture the end of the war.

It looked a lot like this.

**Author's Note:**

> whew this is my first fanfic since i was a Young Teen™ and it was such a joy to write... it legit took me 2 weeks but working on it was consistently the highlight of my day, every day
> 
> i wrote this basically just to answer three questions i had about the blue lions route  
(1) if dedue never actually died, how does dimitri justify the fact that he saw/heard his ghost??  
(2) why does dimitri just stand by that pile of rubble literally all day every day.....?  
(3) did dedue REALLY think dimitri was like, fine the whole time like he claims? or was he worried too??
> 
> so i wrote this! hope you enjoyed!! leave comments; i'm hoping to write some more three houses fanfic so let me know what you'd like to see in upcoming fics!


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